1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to message security technology and, more particularly, to a secure message-sending method using a personalized template and an apparatus using the method, which configure a message based on fields selected by a user and obfuscate the message with characters that cannot be easily understood by machines, thus protecting messages from a normalized hooking program.
2. Description of the Related Art
In most message services, such as a commercial advertisement Short Message Service (SMS) for sending commercial advertisements and an informational SMS or Multimedia Message Service (MMS) for sending informational messages, the contents of messages are formed based on a single template, and thus those services tend to be vulnerable to the leakage of personal information caused by SMS hooking. Further, commercial SMS does not efficiently deliver the information desired by each individual.
For example, referring to commercial SMS, the accumulation and usage of membership points, bank statements, etc. are sent based on a designated template. Due thereto, the following two problems may chiefly arise.
First, SMS messages are sent without sorting information desired by the user from information not desired by the user. In the case of a debit card, after the approval of payment, the payment amount may be known, but the current balance of the debit card cannot be known. In the case of a credit card, information about a cumulative payment amount (total amount spent on the credit card) is sent in most cases even to a user who does not desire to know his or her cumulative payment amount.
Second, there is a possibility that information contained in SMS messages may be leaked based on SMS hooking due to programs including malicious code. The information sent via SMS may be usefully utilized, as in the case of an application which keeps household account records, by collecting card payment details, but personal information about each user, such as the amount of expenditure and the name of the bank mainly used by the user, may be illegally used as undesired marketing data without permission.
In order to solve these problems, a method for encrypting the contents of messages and sending the encrypted messages has been presented, but this method may be applied only when a separate program for decryption is installed on a client, and thus it is difficult to popularize such a method. Further, a method for delivering information contained in SMS messages in the form of images rather than text is effective in MMS technology, but there is a difficulty in commercializing the method for the reason of limited transmission capacity or the like when this information is sent in the form of text messages (SMS messages). In connection with this, Korean Patent No. 10-1559380 (Date of Registration: Oct. 5, 2015) discloses a technology related to “Apparatus and method for obfuscating contents.”